


Like Music

by Charlie9646



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Severus Snape, Cheating, Coffee Shop, F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Infidelity, Morally Grey Severus Snape, Nymphadora Tonks Lives, Post War, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Remus Lupin Lives, Revenge of sorts, Severus Snape Lives, They are kind of horrible, mentions of the werewolf incident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:00:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29294067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charlie9646/pseuds/Charlie9646
Summary: Severus Snape got a second chance at life, only to do the same things all over again, but this time the woman returns his feelings.The Coffee shop AU that’s the anti coffee shop AU
Relationships: Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks, Severus Snape/Nymphadora Tonks
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10
Collections: Love Fest 2021





	Like Music

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meditationsinemergencies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meditationsinemergencies/gifts).



> Unbetaed so I apologize in advance if it’s a little bit rough.
> 
> Thank you meditationsinemergencies for allowing me to go as odd as my brain wanted to. I do promise though one day I will give you the actual fluff Snonks you wanted. 
> 
> #LF2021 #TeamVenus

Severus hated the lies and the secrets, the greyness that came with his position as a spy, but most of all he hated the unspoken rules. The ones that made sure he would only ever live a half-life. Those rules were like bars on the window of his life. They trapped him inside and letting him know about all the things that he couldn’t have: husband or wife, children, and a home. Never did he get to have the holidays, the quiet moments, and all the things that families were supposed to have. It was the little moments that made a life worth living, the ones that when you were on your deathbed that you would want to remember. 

Severus had yet to turn forty, but it felt as if he had both lived a thousand lifetimes and never at all. He might as well have spent his life tied in a hundred knots for the good he had done with this life. Potter, the boy, as he still sometimes slipped and called him, disagreed with that, but then his opinion truly did not matter that much in the end, now did it? He was the boy-who-lived to have the world at his feet, but that didn’t have such a catchy ring to it, now did it? James Potter’s boy insisted to all who would listen that Severus Snape was the true hero much to his chagrin. The world didn’t need to know what he had done because to know the good would mean telling them the bad. It meant telling them that he had betrayed his first friend and his only friend at one point in time. 

Sometimes late at night when he could not sleep, his mind would wander to the idea that it might have been better if he wouldn’t have lived. If Minerva would have left him to his fate, left him to bleed out on the floor of the Shrieking Shack, a mockery of sorts of something so long ago. The sight from his childhood still branded in his mind: his classmate turning into a werewolf, his clothing shredding and landing in piles like confetti. James Potter tried his best to convince him not to tell anyone that Remus wouldn’t hurt anyone. That they made sure he was safe. If it was anyone but Potter he might have felt a bit of sympathy for him. He could see it now like it was yesterday, the other boy stood before him: hazel eyes wide like saucers, his hair tangled, and he was half-dressed. The git must have been doing something that he had no desire to think about. Severus was no prude, but the very idea of Potter with anyone, Lily or not turned his stomach. 

Albus had told Harry that he had protected him because the life debt Severus owed to James Potter, but that had long been paid in full. 

  
  


_ “You owe me a life debt, Snape,” Potter snapped, nostrils flaring. “And for it you can’t tell anyone about this, not anyone! Understood?” _

_ “Understood.” _

It had been over twenty years since that night, Potter and Black were both dead, and yet still Severus could not speak those words, not even to Lupin himself. He could not tell anyone what happened that night. There were many scars on his body, even more in his mind, but that was still the most painful one. Over the years he had tried to speak the words: to Lily back when she would listen to him and called him friend. To his mother when she asked why he had become so utterly afraid of the neighbour’s German Shepherd. The same dog who had spent most of the summer playing with previously. The very sight of the dog caused his body to shake uncontrollably on its own accord. To Albus, when the man asked him why did he exactly feel Lupin should _ not  _ become a professor. Nothing, the man who always had something to say about everything, stood there gaping like a ninny whose head was only filled with thoughts of flowers. Even in death, the elder Potter still had power over him and it had nothing to do with his son. The boy now man kept trying to become his friend and yet it was useless, sometimes it was better just to leave things be. To let old wounds scab over and to be forgotten, but the living Potter could not let him do that. 

The man wanted to know about his parents; the people who he had never gotten a chance to know. Lupin should tell him about them or Minerva, but they didn’t bother, however, that did not mean he would do it. The foolish wizarding world had written enough books written about the Potters. There had to be enough to fill a library, and Potter could even find one with pictures if he was still that juvenile. 

The smell of coffee filled his nose and snapped him out of his thoughts. Tonks set his cup down in front of him, her hair was a cheery rose colour this afternoon and her smile lit up the room. She leaned over and kissed his cheek. 

“Good afternoon, Sev,” Tonk said, tucking a bit of hair behind her ear. “I got held up at work and I am sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he murmured, pulling her into his lap, causing a laugh to slip from her lips. 

She was the reason no matter how Potter pressed him? Severus was unwilling to call himself a good man. Good men were like Neville Longbottom or Arthur Weasley, not him. Good men married their Hogwarts sweethearts and made a life for themselves. Good men were honest, true, and loyal. So unlike men like him. He was a different kind of man, the kind who had moments where they could barely face their reflection in the mirror. Men who slept with another man’s wife and didn’t feel any shame. 

“I missed you so much, but Remus has been pressing for information more than usual.”

“Is he?” Severus asked, as if he thought she was telling him about the weather. “Do you have any interest in telling him about us?”

“No,” she deadpanned and then continued, “not at least until after Teddy is at Hogwarts and maybe not even then.” 

“You are worried about your mother and what she might think?” 

“Yes, I just don’t know if she can handle it after daddy’s death. I don’t know if she can take much more.” Tonks rubbed the heels of her hands against her eyes and sighed softly. “I am sorry, sometimes I feel like I am leading you on. Like we are just playing to pretend that we can have a life together and we will have it one day, I swear it.”

Severus grabbed onto both of her hands, “I believe you, and I understand. Whenever you are ready, love I will be there.” 

He loved this woman like he had never loved anyone ever before and never would after her. It was as deep as a river and as sharp as the blade of a knife. Tonks’ laugh was like music, her lips tasted like honey, and he could imagine making a life with her. Yet part of Severus hoped that they would one day be caught. That one day he would get to see the look on Remus Lupin’s face as his whole world crumbled around him and everything changed. That his wife was cheating on him with the greasy git. 

That would be truly like music to his heart if not his ears. 

This wasn’t the first time Severus Snape had fallen in love with another man’s wife, but this was the first time she loved him back. Maybe they would make a go of it, maybe one day he too would have the wife, the children, and that white picket fence, but it seemed like many things in his life he was going to have to steal it. In a coffee shop in London, with another man’s wife in his lap, he let himself what life could be like if only he played his cards right.

  
  



End file.
